Went to Staples this evening to buy a box of envelopes. Friday I mail out the Miata Club newsletter and I needed envelopes. Found what I wanted, $4.19, for 500 of them suckers. Take it to the checkout and the girl scans it and I hand her a ten dollar bill. She gives me $1.12 back. I look at the change and assume she thought I gave her a $5 (even though if you think about it that wouldn’t be right either.) She goes , “Oh.” And starts towards the cash draw to maybe give me a $5 dollar bill. I check the receipt and see what has actually happened is that the envelopes scanned twice somehow, so I point it out to the cashier.
Here is where things go from bad to worse. She says, “Oh.” And heads off to the customer service area and waves me along to follow her. She gets the supervisor off a ladder and explains to her what has happened. The supervisor says, “We’ll just refund the overage to you.” She proceeds to punch a bunch of buttons on the display and a form spits out which she hands to me and says, “Fill out your name, telephone number and sign it.” I think to myself, all I did was come in to buy envelopes and how did I get into this mess?
I fill out as requested, skipping the street address, city and zip code lines. When I slide it across the counter to her so I can get my $4.44 back, she looks at it and says, “You have to fill it out in case I get audited.” I wait, thinking I have filled it out, I don’t care if you get audited, just give me my money. When she makes no move to pick up the receipt and repeats the you have to fill it out bit again, it dawns on me she wants every line filled out even though she verbally instructed me to do just 3 of the lines. I think to myself again, all I did was come in to buy envelopes and how did I get into this mess?
Now I get a little mad at the whole thing, so I tell her, “Keep the envelopes and give me all my money back.” She apologizes and says that will take a manger to void out my refund to give it all back, “Fine,” I say, “whatever.” Rolling my eyes and digging in my heels. She pages the manager over the intercom. While we wait she apologizes again about the whole thing, mumbles something about getting audited and cash back and I think if I have to listen to her whine much longer I’m going to go postal and climb over the counter and start stabbing her with her pen. So I cave, fill out the other 3 lines of the form and say, “OK, give me the money back.” She is still mumbling apologies as I storm out of the store.
All I did, was go in to buy some envelopes, and look at the mess I got in.